There's a new place in town, where everybody knows your name. It's called Sambalatte.

Step inside this caffee lounge and espresso bar, and you’re welcomed by your first name. The baristas and owners know everyone, and the guests know just about everybody too. It reminds me of the popular TV show “Cheers” and the fictional neighborhood bar, where everybody knew your name. “Cheers” was a welcoming watering hole, a place for friendship and comaradarie. 
Now, Sambalatte is the new “Cheers” and the place to hang out in Vegas.
Since it opened last fall, it's been embraced by the community, and the media have discovered it as well, including The New York Post, the local NPR affiliate, Fox 5, and a Brazilian TV station.Haute Living ranked Sambalatte No. 1 in its Top 5 coffee shops in Las Vegas. Word is spreading all over Twitter and Facebook too. And Seven magazine wrote, because of the micro-roasted varieties, “this just might be the freshest, most distinctive cup of coffee you’ve ever had in Las Vegas.”

Owners Sheila and Luiz havetaken the time to not only focus on the brews, but on customers too by offering quiet attention and friendly smiles, and creating a cheerful atmosphere for people to stop in for their morning organic java and French pastry or sit at a table and sip while reading the paper. They’ve created anupscale boutique coffee lounge with a welcoming atmosphere that’s tough to beat. There’s a European feel about the place, found mostly in coffeehouses in New York and San Francisco.

 

Located on the West Side, in Fashion Village Boca Park,Sambalatte is already filling a niche in the area. The owners have created an environment that welcomes students, entrepreneurs, business people, and friends for a place to meet up by offering comfortable couches, tables and wireless Internet. The mezzanine upstairs is a favorite for some visitors. It’s already being called the best place in town to spot celebrities. But that list also includes local lawyers, cops, journalists, and dancers and performers from the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip.

When the sun is out, people flock to the outdoor umbrella tables and bring their dogs with them (there's an outdoor doggie station too). The shelves are stocked with books, magazines, board and table games, the morning paper, as well as an alt-weekly newspaper, and children are welcome. By nightfall on Friday and Saturday nights, it’s a coffee lounge with live music.

Urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg, in his 1989 book The Great Good Place, called such spots “third places,” where they’re not work and they’re not home. Instead, they’re “the heart of a community’s social vitality, the grassroots of democracy,” he wrote. In his book, he examines gathering places and reminds us how important they still are.

Sambalatte is just that: a great gathering place, where guests feel connected. Located between the Cheesecake Factory and Kona Grill, some stop by for a short time.Others go in with their Kindles, Nooks, laptops, netbooks and iPads, to work while sipping a white mocha or a chai latte, or lunching on an Italian sandwich or Caprese on a bagette (my favorite), yogurt, or a fruit-and-cheese plate. Fresh-baked goods are made in-house daily, so there's a lot to choose from.

Opening Sambalatte was a good move, choosing a corner of Boca Park Fashion Village that has an almost-village feel to it, with a waterfall, a meandering walkway and greenery. The place caught on quickly.
Like “Cheers” and its characters, who regularly hung out for the camaraderie, Sambalatte has become the place to be, where everybody knows your name. You can smell the fresh-roasted aroma before you walk in, and, somehow, the world seems better for it.
Take a virtual tour, with this video, and see for yourself:

Sambalatte Torrefazione

750 South Rampart Blvd

Las Vegas, Nevada 89145

702.272.2333

O melhor cafè de Las Vegas

by Daniel Rayol on fev 13, 2011

Essa semana conheci o “Sambalatte”, com certeza um dos melhores “Coffee Shops” que tive o prazer de conhecer! Uma amiga brasileira aqui de Las Vegas (Cristine Lefkowitz) comentou comigo sobre um novo “coffee shop” já super badalado, aberto por um brasileiro chamado Luiz Oliveira, e que estava sendo muito bem comentado por alguns dos mais importantes canais de mídia de Las Vegas. E realmente eu pude comprovar tudo e muito mais! Luiz, o dono é um uma pessoa com um grande conhecimento na área de serviço e uma enorme cultura do universo do café.

O Sambalatte é um lugar fantástico, desde os quadros com fotos artísticas de fazendas de café em Minas Gerais, a decoração e cores nas paredes, até os pequenos detalhes das mesas comunitárias com tomadas para carregadores de eletrônicos e WiFi gratuito. No entanto, tudo isso fica quase pequeno comparado ao café e guloseimas servidas no local. Todo café servido no Sambalatte, passa por um longo processo de seleção, e tem como ser 100% rastreado á sua origem! E no Sambalatte funciona mais ou menos assim: Você escolhe o grão, e também um dos vários processos de preparar o café. O meu predileto é o Siphon (ou siffon), um método inventado á mais de 200 anos pelos franceses, e hoje muito usado pelos japoneses para preparar o Blue Mountain Coffee da Jamaica. O aparelho lembra um pouco algum tipo de instrumento que você encontraria em um laboratório de química, mas produz um café bem encorpado, sem ser amargo. Outro aparelho interessante no Sambalatte, é o de preparar café gelado, parece uma daquelas invenções de Leonardo Da Vince, e o café pode levar até 24hs para ser preparado. Mas como se não bastasse, Sambalatte também serve uma variedade de quitutes que chegam todos os dias, vindos da França congelados em um processo que usa hidrogênio no dia anterior, e descongelados apenas na hora de servir! Outros pratos, como os Gelatos, quiches, sanduíches e etc, são preparados diariamente por chefes franceses renomeados de Las Vegas. Além de tudo isso, quatro vezes por semana, músicos locais se apresentam tocando diferentes estilos de Jazz no local. Bem, com tantas qualidades temos que reconhecer que o Luiz com o Sambalatte, traz á Las Vegas algo de grande importância aos que vivem aqui, e aos que visitam também… Cultura! Um lugar para socializar, e saborear! Coisa que muitas vezes, apenas são encontradas em grandes metrópoles do mundo, e nem sempre em uma cidade como Las Vegas, liderada pelas grandes corporações e casinos.
Parabéns Luiz.
Daniel Rayol.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2011 SAMBALATTE

Travels with a Gourmet

Brazilian-owned Sambalatte was such a find that even if I stumbled onto it on my second to the last day in Las Vegas, I made sure to visit it twice.  It was the best coffee I had during my stay and the best cafe I have ever been to in Vegas with a relaxed but welcoming atmosphere and baristas that know what they are doing.  The espressos are short the way they should be (Starbucks pay attention) and thecappuccini (can I say that?) are frothy and decorated with delicious "latte art".

Inside there are several tables, a cozy sofa and even a few shaded outdoor tables.  Free WiFi, a table kitted out with rechargeable stations, a selection of breakfast breads and pastries, sandwiches and even gelato.  Get there quick before it starts to get mobbed by the coffee cognoscenti.
_______________________________
Sambalatte
750 S. Rampart Blvd., Suite 9
at Boca Park, Summerlin
Las Vegas NV
Tel: +1 (702) 272 2333

Best Hangout

Desert Companion Magazine - February 2011
by STEVEN MASON

Lots of coffeehouses drink so deeply from the anti-Starbucks vibe that they've become caricatures of anti-corporatism. Fair trade? Check. Organic? Double check. Che Guevara posters? Venti check. So whether you're traipsing around Greenwich Village or San Francisco's SoMa district, finding a coffeehouse that creates an oeuvre and owns it - instead of proffering over-roasted coffee and overpriced imitations of food - is next to impossible. But that's all because you're not looking right here in Las Vegas (Boca Park, to be exact), where Sambalatte Torrefazione serves world-class java for the true enthusiast, freshly roasted, ground and brewed (French press, vacuum brew, chemex, aero press or single brew), tea, foodie salads and sandwiches like their caprese; pastries flown in from Paris; comely desserts; and palate-cleansing gelatos. All in a two-story, spacious environment, walls adorned with photos of coffee in various stages of production; communal teak tables; the requisite Wi-Fi along with a bevy of rechargeable Wi-Fi stations; books and magazines; room for the impromptu business meeting or understated art of the pickup; live Latin and jazz music on many nights; unobtrusive but substantive music the rest of the time; and an eclectic mix of cool, personable coffee-lovers (as customers, baristas and servers). When it comes time for my dictionary, Sambalatte has got first dibs on the word "oasis."
[750 S. Rampart Blvd. Suite 9, 272-2333, http://www.sambalatte.com/]

Newbie cred: Steven Mason, brand strategist, ADHD connoisseur, and megadose consumer of caffeine, has lived in Las Vegas for 15 months.